US President Joe Biden calls for Russian Leader Putin Vladimir’s Removal.

In Poland on Saturday, US President Joe Biden warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” words that a White House official subsequently said were designed to prepare the world’s democracies for a prolonged conflict over Ukraine, not to support regime change in Russia.

Biden’s remarks on Saturday, which followed a statement earlier in the day in which he called Putin a “butcher,” marked a strong escalation of the US response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Biden used Poland’s four decades behind the Iron Curtain in a significant speech delivered at Warsaw’s Royal Castle in an attempt to make the case that the world’s democracies must confront an autocratic Russia as a threat to global security and democracy.

However, a comment near the end of the address highlighted the possibility of an escalation by Washington, which has resisted direct military intervention in Ukraine and has stated explicitly that it opposes regime change.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden told a crowd in Warsaw after condemning Putin’s month-long war in Ukraine.

Biden’s words, according to a White House official, do not signal a shift in Washington’s policy.

“The President’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbours or the region,” the official said. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

“That’s not for Biden to determine,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said when asked about Biden’s remark to Reuters. Russians elect the country’s president.”

Biden described the fight against Putin as a “new battle for freedom,” claiming that Putin’s ambition for “total authority” was a strategic failure for Russia and a direct threat to the European peace that has largely endured since World War II.

“The West is now stronger, more united than it has ever been,” Biden said. “This battle will not be won in days or months, either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.”

The speech came after three days of meetings in Europe with the G7, European Council, and NATO partners, and occurred about the same time that rockets fell on the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, which is only 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the Polish border.

“Their brave resistance is part of a larger fight for essential democratic principles that unite all free people,” Biden said. “We stand with you. Period.”

Biden stated in his speech that NATO is a defensive security alliance that has never sought Russia’s demise, and that the West has no wish to harm Russia’s people, despite the fact that its sanctions threaten to devastate their economy.

Until 1989, Poland was a member of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact security alliance and was under communist government for four decades. It is presently a member of both the EU and NATO.

Poland has been at odds with the EU and the US in recent years due to the growth of right-wing populism, but fears of Russian expansion beyond its borders have pushed Poland closer to its Western partners.

Biden said the West is acting in lockstep because of the “gravity of the threat” to global peace, speaking to a throng that included American, Polish, and Ukrainian flags.

“The battle for democracy could not conclude and did not conclude with the end of the Cold War,” Biden said. “Over the last 30 years the forces of autocracy have revived all across the globe.”

According to Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, Biden dropped by a meeting with the country’s foreign and defense ministers earlier in the day and made additional, vague security commitments on expanding defense cooperation.

Biden also went to the national stadium in Warsaw to see a refugee processing center. Poland has taken in over 2 million refugees fleeing the violence. Since the violence began in Ukraine, an estimated 3.8 million people have fled.

Putin refers to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine as a “special military operation” aimed at demilitarizing and “denazifying” the country.